Two
weeks have passed since the tragic events in Catalonia. A short time.
But it has been long enough
to make public many things that were not known. It has also been
enough to bring wonderful human reactions and also
to pitilessly reveal thewretched,
scandalous manoeuvres
of some people.

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International
opinion has been unanimous in praising the impeccable reaction of the
Catalan government and the police. Unlike other countries also struck
by attacks, in Catalonia from the very
start the Muslim inhabitants joined
the demonstrations of mourning.
The sister of one of the perpetrators and of
one of the detainees made,
in Ripoll, an impressive speech taking a
clear position against terrorism. And the father of a child killed in
the attack and the imam
of the small mosque in his town
of Rubí, near Barcelona, publicly
hugged each other, and
the photo ("the photo of the decade", said the Catalan
president) has been distributed well beyond
Catalonia’s
borders. There has been no call for
revenge against Muslims. Instead, it has
been for brotherhood, for
peace and fora
determined rejection of terrorism. The
Catalan slogan "I'm not afraid" has spread like wildfire.
At the mass demonstration against terror in Barcelona on August 26
there were many Muslims side to side
with the other 500,000 participants. And the greatest applause was
for those who helped at the time of need: police, health workers,
doctors, taxi drivers and many others who helped from the start
wherever it was needed. Catalan police vehicles
were covered in
flowers.

At
the same event, the presence of King Philip and the Spanish Prime
Minister Rajoy was greeted with shouts
and whistles and with banners that scolded
them for allowing
the sale of weapons in large numbers to countries such as Saudi
Arabia that export wahhabism
/ salafism and have helped those of the EI to raise their ugly head.
Anyone can consider
this reaction to
be either good or bad. But for
many Catalans, some reactions from Spanish politicians
and media in the past
few days,
information, misrepresentations and reproaches have put
them in a very
bad mood.

Very
early on, attempts to downgrade
the role of the Catalan police began and to
bestow the laurels on
the Spanish interior minister and the Spanish
National police. There was talk of
independence as one of the reasons for terrorism, or was even
equated to it.
And immediately the attack was talked about as an important reason to
induce the Catalans to preserve (Spanish) unity
and to give up
the referendum. The
attempt, therefore,
was to abuse the tragedy
with political ends. And even in some
German media it was said that it would be better for Catalans to
solve their real
problems rather than to worry
about the desire for independence. They do not seem to understand
that they are two completely different issues.

But
curiously, it was the
Catalan institutions that were accused of
this abuse for political purposes.
This was not only a lie, but also an incomparable shamelessness. It
is not surprising
that it was not the speeches
of Rajoy but the statements by President
Puigdemont that
have been praised throughout the world as a model of tolerance,
prudence and
humanity, and have even been considered as a brilliant contrast to
Donald Trump’sshameful slips.

There
was a great hoo-ha on account of the fact
that an agent of the Catalan police had not passed
on to others a question a
Belgian police acquaintance about imam
Abdelbaki Es Satty. But as has now
been proven, the request had nothing to do
with any warning of an attack. He
had just been asked whether there was anything on
the imam in the Catalan police data bank. And there was nothing,
because the Spanish services had not passed them
any information.

More
serious is that - as has been recently reported - infiltrated
Americans had spoken to Younes Abouyaakoub, the author of the attack
two weeks before the incident, and that he
had talked about the preparations. The
Americans immediately notified the Spanish services, but they did not
pass the warning on to
the Catalan police.

Let's
keep it short: in
the last few days a great deal has happened
and a great deal has been learned that the
Catalans have not liked at all.
And this, like it
or not, is the reason for the whistles
and the shouts against
the representatives of Spain in the rally on
August 26, and for those that
may be uttered in future.